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CRUZ — MARTYR WITH SORE FEET? OR SAVVY 2016 HOPEFUL? As you read, firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is taking the Senate floor by storm, where he’s vowed to blare criticism of Obamacare “until I am no longer able to stand.” … Or until noon tomorrow — whichever comes first. Never mind that his speech will do absolutely nothing to stop a Senate vote Wednesday to begin work on the House-passed government funding bill. He and buddy Sen. Mike Lee are planning to talk for a long while. In the meantime, we Congress vigilantes could be in for a real show from this potential 2016 presidential candidate who’s assuredly scoring mad points with some in the Republican base right now. Cruz started his spiel at 2:41 p.m. and, within the first hour, compared his critics to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany.

— Or follow National Journal’s Matt Berman and Matt Vasilogambros, who are blogging his main points, making regular updates: http://bit.ly/18nMbOz

PROCEDURAL QUESTION DU JOUR: IS THIS A FILIBUSTER? Forget the Twitter debate. Pro Report went straight to the experts to find out if this is technically classified as a “filibuster” since Cruz is powerless to stop a CR vote tomorrow. Here’s Kate Scott, Senate assistant historian, who notes that there is no technical “filibuster” definition: “The debate right now on Twitter is: It can’t be a filibuster if they’ve already filed a cloture motion and we know there’s going to be a vote. And I think our answer to that is that filibusters traditionally don’t have to be something that’s meant to delay a piece of legislative business. Filibusters can also be one member’s effort to get word out and educate people … so the story gets out there. ... Some people think it’s specifically to stop legislation, but it’s not necessarily to do that.”

POP QUIZ: Who carried out the longest filibuster, at 24 hours and 18 minutes? And what was he protesting? (answer at the bottom)

SHUTDOWN UPDATES —

THE (VOTES) MUST GO ON. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is more than confident that he has the votes to begin work on the CR tomorrow. Cruz will be booted from the floor — if he’s still there. He’s been unable to persuade other Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to vote against taking up the bill. “I just don’t happen to think filibustering a bill that defunds Obamacare is the best route to defunding Obamacare,” McConnell said Tuesday. “All it does is shut down the government and keep Obamacare funded. And none of us want that.” SNAP!

BUT FOR HOW LONG? The CR timetable is fluid at the moment. Cruz and crew can drag the Senate’s passage votes out until Sunday, when senators would strip the Obamacare defunding policy rider from the bill and send it back to the House. That would give Speaker John Boehner just a few hours before that Sept. 30 midnight deadline.

HOT POTATO. But that’s not the only option. Republicans are floating the idea of allowing the Senate to pass the CR sooner than Sunday, sending it back to the House to give Boehner more time, POLITICO’s Congress team reported Tuesday. Of course, they’d have to get every single senator, including Cruz, to agree — a longshot. The report: “If House [GOP leadership] got their hands on the Senate’s funding bill with a few days on the clock — as opposed to a few hours — they’d be much more likely to send it back to Reid’s chamber with another piece of Republican policy attached, according to several senior Republican aides. It would broaden Republicans’ options, one GOP source said, and give the party more time to count votes and maneuver.

“The tentative plan within Republican leadership as of Tuesday morning is to pass a debt ceiling bill Friday or Saturday, and then take up the continuing resolution when it comes back from the Senate. If the House gets the Senate funding bill earlier, House Republican leadership might have to accelerate its debt ceiling legislation, hardly an easy task in a chamber where raising the borrowing limit is seen as sacrilege.” http://politi.co/1bDWm6w

TWEET OF THE DAY: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) getting snarky on the Twitters: “In our D caucus meeting.True confession: I'd rather have a diet coke and popcorn &watch the show that must be going in R caucus today.” (h/t Jose DelReal)

FROM D.C. TO NYC —

OBAMA EXTENDS HAND TO IRAN. President Barack Obama in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday said the U.S. — alongside the EU, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China — will begin engaging Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani. It won’t be a cakewalk, he admits, but if Iran is willing to relinquish its alleged nuke pursuits, progress is possible.

— From the speech: “Iranians have long complained of … U.S. interference in their affairs and … overthrowing the Iranian government during the Cold War. On the other hand, Americans see an Iranian government that has … taken American hostages, killed U.S. troops and civilians, and threatened our ally Israel .... I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight. The suspicions run too deep. But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road toward a different relationship. …We are not seeking regime change, and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.” Watch it: http://politi.co/1gXhP8F

THEN, IRAN SMACKS IT AWAY? U.S. foreign policy nerds had been abuzz for day over a potential historical meeting between Obama and Rouhani at the U.N. Tuesday — the first since Jimmy Carter sat down with Iran's Shah pre-Iranian Revolution. But, Iranian officials ultimately slammed the door on that opportunity, declining the so-called encounter, White House administrators said. “We have said publicly and we also said privately to the Iranians that we're open to having discussions on the margins of UNGA — informal discussions not a bilateral meeting. That proved to be too complicated for the Iranians to do at this point," a senior administration official said. “The Iranians have an internal dynamic that they have to manage and the relationship with the United States is clearly quite different than the relationship that Iran has with other Western nations." The Wall Street Journal wrote about this today: http://on.wsj.com/1gXeUg9

— Of note: John Kerry is still slated to sit down with Iranian officials Thursday.

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U.N. PART II —

OBAMA: SYRIAN DISARMAMENT MUST BE VERIFIED. Don’t be a toothless tiger. That was the gist of Obama’s message to the U.N. Security Council Tuesday when he implored them to threaten “consequences” should Syria fail to hand over its chemical weapons. “There must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments,” he said. “There must be consequences if they fail to do so. If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws.”

BREAKING ON PRO —

DoD SLAMMED ANEW ON SEXUAL ASSAULT: TRANSPARENCY. Darren Samuelsohn, with the latest take in a Pro series on this issue: “From tracking the extent of the problem to showing how cases are resolved, the military has consistently and forcefully resisted fully airing details. And while it’s no surprise that the Pentagon would rely on a covert system … to handle … [an] often embarrassing problem that has very real privacy concerns, advocates, lawmakers and even some military officials say the frequent lack of transparency has made the already complicated problem even worse.

“Take the survey that threw a spotlight on the problem — the recent finding that 26,000 service members said they faced an unwanted sexual encounter in the military last year. Critics said the number was inflated. Victim advocates said it under-reported the situation. … The Pentagon made it almost impossible to tell. Critical information that could have helped Congress and the public better sift through the data landed on an obscure website for military document releases.” http://politico.pro/16oURZ1

BRITS: WANT 740,000 NEW JOBS? PASS FREE TRADE PACT. Doug Palmer, for our soon-to-launch Pro Trade: “A free trade pact with Europe could help create more than 740,000 U.S. jobs by powering exports of autos, chemicals and other goods and services, says a study the British Embassy in Washington released Tuesday. [The report] … comes as the United States and European Union gear up for a second round of talks in October on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which they hope to complete by late 2014. … The United Kingdom of course has its own motive for promoting these numbers. Another study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, in London, suggests the U.K.’s GDP would increase by between 0.14 and 0.35 percent as a result of TTIP.” http://politico.pro/1bEb9hF

LEAHY READIES PUSH FOR SWEEPING NSA OVERHAUL. No more bulk collection of Americans’ phone call logs, and a lot more doggish oversight of surveillance requests. Those were two proposals Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) outlined Tuesday, highlighting his new push to restrict NSA surveillance during a Georgetown University Law Center speech. On Wednesday, Judiciary holds a classified briefing on NSA, followed next week by a second, open hearing with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Gen. Keith Alexander. Our Tony Romm reported Tuesday that Leahy “said he planned to work with his Republican colleagues in the House to rein in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the NSA’s ability to tap Internet communications as it scours for foreign terror suspects.” http://politico.pro/16Fz2yB

A PERFECT STORM? SHUTDOWN, OBAMACARE LAUNCH PROBLEMS. You’re all smart Pros and obviously already realized that Affordable Care Act exchange enrollment starts the same exact day as the shutdown — if we get there. So what does this mean for the Obamacare launch? Bloomberg yesterday reported that since most ACA funding is mandatory, things should run smoothly, even if the government goes dark. (Full piece: http://bloom.bg/18Q8Cdc)

— But today, our Jason Millman reports that’s not necessarily the case — it all depends on which workers are labeled “essential” and “non-essential”: “The big question for the federal government is ‘would systems like the federal hub be up and running [in the case of a shutdown],’ said Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange, on a Tuesday morning press call hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. ‘Is that an essential service?’ ‘We have every anticipation that insuring millions of Americans sounds pretty essential,’ Lee added.” http://politico.pro/1eEukJt

ON TAP WEDNESDAY: The House returns. … Obama returns to Washington, but Vice President Joe Biden will be in New York meeting with leaders from Uruguay and Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry will be meeting with French dignitaries and reps from the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council.

— At 8:30 a.m., Georgetown University and Deloitte will host a symposium, "Implementing Immigration Reform: Imagining the Possibilities." Participants include Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Felicia Escobar, senior policy director for immigration with the White House Domestic Policy Council. … Throughout the day, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosts a second annual Cyber Security Summit, bringing in House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel and former Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen to talk.

BE AN AGRICULTURE PRO: Pro Agriculture, the second of three new Pro policy areas launching this fall, will debut on Oct. 2 and will feature breaking news and inside analysis from our best-in-the-business reporters. To learn more about Pro Agriculture, email info@politicopro.com or call 703-341-4600.

POLICY AROUND THE WEB:

— Brazil President Dilma Rousseff used her speech at the U.N. Tuesday to scold the U.S. over its sweeping surveillance program, just a week after she canceled a scheduled trip the U.S. to protest the NSA program. AP: http://politico.pro/1b9Eq4m

— The Telegraph reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will warn the world of Iran’s new “honey trap” when he addresses the U.N. next week. http://bit.ly/1b93ad3

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